The marriage of heaven and hell: An integrative study of the Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre

ROBERT E. KIERNAN T H E M A R R I A G E OF H E A V E N A N D H E L L : AN I N T E G R A T I V E S T U D Y OF T H E M A R X I S M OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE THE PROPHET OF HEAVEN: MARX GROUNDS SARTRE In this initial analysis we assert that the base established by Marx is consistently utilized as foundation by Jean-Paul Sartre, who is often misread on this point. 1 The source of these fundamental points of departure is the early Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts o f 1844. We assume that, first, these writings are an integral part of Marx's thought, and second, that there does not exist any real contradiction between these writings and the later Capital. While this may be an heroic assertion, it would be inappropriate to discuss these points here, as time and space limitations prohibit it. 2 We will examine three concepts drawn from the Manuscripts in this order: first, Marx's 'Critique of Hegel'; second, the two-fold structure of man as manifest in the species-being/natural-being dialectic; and third, the notion of estrangement as it applies to reification. 3 At the very end of the third manuscript we find the following subtitle: 'Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole'. 4 One finds here not only Marx's Hegelian roots but also the limitations of his forerunner's philosophy. With careful use of Feuerbach, Marx picks his way through the Hegelian system, salvaging the useful areas and discarding the rest. Initially, his attacks fall not only on the head of Hegel, but on that of all philosophy. By estranging himself from the world and his sensuous thought, the philosopher finds himself in the realm of abstraction which he may not escape. In this way the entire "history of the alienation process is, therefore, nothing but the history of the production of abstract (i.e. absolute) thought ...,,s The reality of the philosopher's notion of the objective side of the in4tself/ for4tself dialectic is subjective in nature due to his imprisonment in the abstract world. In a word, the philosopher is an idealist whose writings are impotent. This, of course, is the influence of Feuerbach who, as Marx's mentor, pulled him down from the celestial tower and grounded him in the world .6 Studies in Soviet Thought 22 (1981) 111-146. 0039-3797/81/0222-0111 $03.60. Copyright © 1981 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A. 112 ROBERT E. KIERNAN Marx next qualifies his criticism of this aspect of Hegelian philosophy and of the young followers of Hegel (especially Bruno Bauer), among whom he had dwelt at one time. Marx remains consistent with Hegel's Phenomenology where he "conceives the self-creation of man as progress, conceives objectification as a loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labor and comprehends objective man - true, because real man - as the outcome of man's own labor". 7 The problem arises out of the very last chapter of the Phenomenology, where "absolute knowledge" is explicated as the grand finale of the dialectic. This is for Marx a warped conclusion because the only labor Hegel acknowledged was mental labor. He could not conceive of the type of manual labor in which the proletarian engages every day. Thus, Marx did not wish to refute the fundamental Hegelian system but merely to expand upon it and remove the "onesidedness", as he calls it, of Hegel's idealism. Marx inserted materialism into Hegel as a way of completing the Hegelian philosophy. But all of this is, of course, very well-known. What is more essential here is Marx's interpretation, not his criticism. The first indication of Marx's own thought comes earlier in the first manuscript but is incomprehensible without three more concepts defined in this critique. The first concept is that of man's natural being. As a natural being man is not only dependent on nature to fulfill his needs, but also upon the objects of nature which posit him. Man "only creates and posits objects because he is posited by objects, because at bottom he is nature". This is a very interesting paradox, where man becomes ensnared within nature because nature fulfills his needs both psychologically and physiologically (through labor). Man's objectivity is not outside of him in nature because nature envelops man within its larger schema by endowing man with natural powers in the form of instincts. By way of analogy Marx explains that the sun is an object to a flower because the flower gains its life-giving power from the sun. By the same token, however, the flower becomes an object for the sun as an "expression of the life-awakening power of the sun's objective essential power". Thereby man's essential power in the form of his instincts is nothing without nature to reflect them back to man. Here we find a foreshadowing of the necessity of "other direction" as a constituent element of reification. Marx even expressly writes that a "being which is not itself an object for some third party ... has no being for its object; i.e. it is not objectively related. Its being is not objective", a MARX AND SARTRE 113 The next term to be defined comes from the critique of Hegel's concept of negation. Hegel defines the object as something which is annulled and made negative in order that consciousness be posited while Marx finds this a contradiction. Since Hegel's estranged object is for consciousness its own self-consciousness, the object becomes the negation which is estranged from that which negates, or consciousness. In this way the supersession of alienation becomes merely "the negation of the negation" since the object is negative to begin with, due to the fundamental idealistic flaw. What is left is abstraction (consciousness) comprehending itself as abstraction (self-conscious objectification, negated) which leaves the comprehensive act to be that which comprehends nothingness. Marx's solution to this problem has already been described in his definition of natural man. If nature becomes for man his object in the reciprocal fashion described in the definition, the supersession of alienation finds abstraction comprehending nature as the harmonious union of man unestranged from himself. The final term we should draw from the third manuscript before leaving it is part of what Marx calls the "positive aspects of the Hegelian dialectic". It is the term supersession which may be easily defined as an "objective movement of retracting the alienation into self". 9 By this, Marx means that in superseding the estranged objective world and its estranged mode of being, man can fully appropriate his objective essence. As part of this universal supersession of estrangement, Marx cites various constituent supersessions, such as the supersession of God by atheism, private property by Communism, etc., which have all impelled the appropriation of man's "real objectification" towards the ultimate lack of estrangement. This said, let us return to the first manuscript to examine the complement of man's natural being, species being, and its role in the fundamental subject/ object dialectic. The subtitle of this part of the manuscript is 'Estranged Labor'. It contains, in a few short pages, the fundamental point of departure of all of Marx's philosophy and is therefore essential not only to this exercise but also to any analysis of Marx. The first paragraph is perhaps the best (in that it is the unique) summary of Marx by Marx anywhere in his works. But that is not of concern now;more pertinent is Marx's definition of species being. The definition of species being pivots on the concept of universality. Because man adopts, both in practice and theory, the objects of nature as his, he must also adopt every other man (or everyone in his species) as his 114 ROBERT E. KIERNAN object. In this way he is, as an individual, an element of a species or an element of the universal category of man. Hence, when man adopts the species as his object he adopts a universal which puts him in touch with his freedom. It should be noted that this universal is not similar to the Hegelian Absolute Spirit, but is rather constituted by the sphere of inorganic nature in which man lives. In fact, "the more universal the man is, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic nature in which he lives". Hence, when Marx says "universal" he implies that man's inorganic body encompasses all of nature in one of the following two ways: first, in that nature provides him with the direct means, i.e. food, clothing, shelter, of his life; second, that nature is appropriated by man's consciousness as the material, instrument and object of his life activity. 1° Thus, we can see that universality is not only part of species being but it is inherent in Marx's description of natural being as well. The term itself is Feuerbach's (Gattungswesen) and it is obviously so. Yet, there is still an element of the subject which is prevalent. This becomes especially clear as Marx distinguishes between the species of the animal and the species of man. In animal activity, writes Marx, there exists no distinction between life and life's activity. The animal's life "is its life activity". In an unalienated world this is not true of man's life activity as he is distinguished from the animals. "Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness". 11 In this way he is free from the detelmination which the combination of life itself and means to life involves. In fact, this provides the very essence of the concept of species being. "It is just because of this that he [man] is a species being. Or it is only because he is a species being that he is conscious being, i.e. that his own life is an object for him." It is now clear where universality, via nature and including man, and freedom, the ability to have as one's life activity the reflection upon life's activity, fit into the definition of species being. In estranged labor we find not the being of the species but rather the being of the animal where "it is just because man is a conscious being that he makes his life activity, his essential being, a mere means to his existence", n What is ultimately estranged, then, is man's freedom. Again, using the animal to distinguish what is essentially human, Marx illustrates how the animal produces one-sidedly in terms of his immediate, physical, bodily and singular species needs. In contrast man produces universally for all of nature, even when the object of his production is outside the MARX AND SARTRE 115 realm of his body where he may freely confront it. Man creates, "not according to the laws of need but according to the laws of beauty". Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the ob]ecttfication o f man's species life; he duplicates himself not only in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. 13 Before attempting a satisfactory development of the idea of objectification we must complete the species being/natural being dialectic. Recalling Marx's description of natural being as that being inherently dependent upon the nature of which he is a part, in both physical and psychological senses, makes it possible to establish a dialectic with the species counterpart. Both are at base notions of naturalism as they find their essence in the universe called "nature" from which man cannot be separated. In this way Marx believes that naturalism transcends "both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both". 14 More specifically, since man objectifies his being in his labor he cannot perceive the world as a merely "natural" universe from which he is excluded. On the other hand, he cannot labor, and thereby objectify, in a purely "human" sense, since the material of his labor is always nature. Man is nature and nature is man; neither can exist independently of the other, is Such thinking brings Marx to write: Neither nature objectively nor nature subjectivelyis directly given in a form adequate to the human being. 16 This is quite a reconciliation in terms of the history of metaphysics; yet, as a potential panacea, it is rather a pre-emption. Still, it is all that is written. Rather than elaborating, however, Marx mentions history in the very next sentence. He writes that just as everything in nature has its origin and beginnings, man too, has his coming into being in history. Yet, unlike the history of nature, man's history, as his life's activity, is reflected upon or is selfconscious. "It is a history, and hence as an act of origin it is a conscious self-transcending act of origin. History is the true natural history of man (on which more later)." 17 We certainly did get "more later". This small remark in itself ties the ontology of Marx to his later work but, as mentioned above, that is not the subject of this exercise. Objectification in its essence and relative to estrangement may now be examined as all other terms and concepts upon which it is based have been defined. 116 ROBERT E. KIERNAN It has been established that man has a radical bond with nature in that his labor on nature is his self outside of itself. Specifically, man must "confer his life on the object", 18 so that the object he confronts is readily identifiable to him as himself. When that object no longer appears to man as his own confirmation of self, man becomes not only alienated from that object but alienated from himself. Hence, contrary to Hegal, objectification does not necessarily imply a reduction to alienation. Rather, Marx finds objectification as the authentic being of man where his labor is directly involved in his species being/natural being resolution and/or harmony. It becomes the true universal and free way in which life progresses. Alienation only comes into view when nature, or the object of man's exteriorization, turns against the process of re-intedorization and prevents man from confronting his being directly. Alienation is not fundamental; objectification is. Hegel's error was to assume alienation as a primary essence of man, thus establishing a radical dualism. Marx's "original man" comes not from a dualism but from a unity. Alienation is imposed later, historically, when capital intervenes between man and matter. Hegel's concept of self-alienation then is not a misconception to Marx, but merely the initial alienation from which social alienation is derived. This follows from Marx's critique of idealism which has already been described. Therefore, Marx describes to us four different aspects of estrangement in the Manuscripts, each of which pivots on Hegel's self-alienation as an extension of it. In essence, this is the most profound or at least the most significant aspect of the Manuscripts on the whole. Each aspect, it should be noted, is a direct product of the Hegelian Master/Slave dialectic, where the slave labors upon worked matter which is not to his purposes, free or alienated, but to those of the Master. As an introduction to these four concepts of estrangement, Marx explains that the resultant reduces man to the animal level because he can only gain true enjoyment from the most basic animal functions, such as "eating, drinking, procreating, etc.". In essence, "what is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal". 19 The first aspect of estrangement lies within the realm of matter itself. It occurs when the "relation of the worker to the product of labor as an alien object exercizes power over him". 2° Not only is the matter that is labored upon, or "exteriorized", not reintegratable as the re-interiorization of the life of that labor, but it exerts a power over the activity of the worker which is MARX AND SARTRE 117 in itself further alienating. The material wodd is alien and positively hostile and threatening to the worker as it controls his life activity .21 The second estrangement is revealed when the "relation of labor to the act o f production within the labor process is considered". Here the worker's life activity (and what is life but activity, asks Marx) as seen by him as an alien activity not belonging to himself. He does not create freely but according to another's standard which is peculiarly not his own. Activity (life) then becomes a saddened suffering; strength becomes weakness; begetting becomes emasculating.2 2 The third aspect of estrangement concerns man's species being/natural being, as nature has been turned against him through the material of his labor (the first aspect). Man is no longer species-being because he is no longer conscious of his life activity since it too is alien to him (the second aspect). Therefore and accordingly, man is estranged from his own body as an aspect of his natural being and estranged from his human or universal quality as an aspect of his species being. In a word, man is now an isolated individual. As a consequence of the interplay of these three aspects, Marx arrives at the fourth, final and most significant aspect of estrangement: the estrangement of man from man. When man confronts the material object of his own labor he confronts another man. Or more clearly, when the slave confronts the material object of his labor he confronts the Master. Since what "applies to a man's relation to his work, to the product of his labor and to himself, also holds of a man's relation to the other man, and to the other man's labor and object of labor", 23 we may carry over all of the pejorative, if not horrifying, adjectives which Marx uses to describe self-alienation - unhappiness, hostility, mortification, servitude, bondage, devaluation - to man's alienation from man. It is in these four aspects that the essence of Marx's philosophy lies. As an interesting aside, particularly relevant to our next section, consider two strangely prevalent terms here. First, note that all alienation is described by Marx as "relational". This is a key word throughout the last section of the first manuscript. All alienation, it is suggested, is immediately relational: "The relation of the worker"; "The relation of labor"; "Man's relation to other man"; "The relationship of the non-worker". :4 Second, consider Marx's use of the idea of "Other" (capital "O" from Hegel) and "Otherness". Throughout all three manuscripts can be found references to this idea: "man's relation to himself only becomes for him clear, 118 ROBERT E. KIERNAN objective and actual through his relation to the other man", writes Marx in the first manuscript in the section subtitled 'Estranged Labor'. 2s Indeed, "his own sense-perception first exists as human sensuousness for himself through the other man" . . . appears in the second manuscript under the subtitle 'Private Property and Communism'. 26 In the same manuscript, under the subtitle 'Human Requirements and Division of Labor Under the Rule of Private Property', we f'md: Estrangement is manifested not only in the fact that my means of life belong to someone else, but in that that which I desire is the inaccessible possession of another . . . . 27 Finally, even in the last manuscript Marx writes, after Hegel, that not only does self-consciousness find itself at home in its other-being as such but that "consciousness pretends to be directly the other of i t s e l f . . . ".2s THE P R O P H E T OF HELL: SARTRE USES MARX We may now attempt to explicate certain fundamental tenets of Sartre's philosophy as possible correlates to the Marxian ground. At this point we shall deal exclusively with Sartre, saving the painstaking intercourse for the last section and the Critique. As with Marx, we shall turn to the earlier work of Sartre, namely the Transcendence of the Ego (1936) and Being and Nothingness (1943). Again we shall assume, out of necessity, the autonomy and coherence of Sartre's work to avoid argument out of our context.29 The structure of this section is also triadic. First we shall deal with an aspect of Sartre's predecessor, namely the Hussedian notion of consciousness. Second, we will move on to Being and Nothingness clearly to establish the relation of the "Body" to that consciousness. Finally, we shall point out the meaning of objectification in Being and Nothingness with specific focus on the idea of the "Other". The critique of Husserl in the Transcendence of the Ego is as illuminating of Sartre's later philosophy as the Paris Manuscripts are of Marx's thought. While Hussed's phenomenology is even more idealist (and even worse, quietistic) in its purest form than the phenomenology of Hegel, it puts Sartre, as Hegel did Marx, on the path to a "worldly" philosophy of the concrete. This is especially evidenced by his use of Heidegger, as we shall see later. First we must establish the problematic of the Transcendence of the Ego. Most clearly stated, Sartre is at odds with what Hussed claims to be the MARX AND SARTRE 119 result of the phenomenological "epoch6" or the reduction, which allows the phenomenologist to discount all evidence of his existence in order that he may study consciousness and its relationship to objects (intentionality) as a pure phenomenon, or what Husserl calls ein Schauspiel nur. However, Husserl modified his "epoch6" in his later work (especially after the Logische Untersuchungen, 1901) to give this pure phenomenon a "transcendental ego" or an ' T ' which is equally involved in the possibility of any act of consciousness as is the object of that consciousness itself. Sartre cannot accept this - for very good reasons. Sartre will begin his arguments by pointing toward the consistency of Husserl's earlier work, where the psychic and psychophysical is enough 30 to make consciousness "mine" without violating its spontaneity . In the reassertion of a transcendental ego by Husserl, Sartre finds three fatal flaws. First, it would clog consciousness with the opacity of an object which would destroy its translucent quality as that which is of some object. Second, it would destroy the spontaneity of consciousness, causing philosophy to search in vain for an origin. Again by the logic of cause and effect, this would be a futile search. Finally, the transcendental I (or "hul~" as Husserl calls it) would not allow for the profound and original view on which phenomenology is founded: that consciousness is a non-substantial absolute. "A pure consciousness is an absolute quite simply because it is conscious of itself. It remains therefore a 'phenomenon' in the very special sense in which 'to be' and 'to appear' are one". This is truly the most significant consequence as it rests on a contradiction within Husserl's philosophy itself. It makes phenomenology impossible by loading down consciousness with the character of an existent while its true virtue of absoluteness comes through its non-existence. "All the results of phenomeology begin to crumble if the I is not, by the same title as the world, a relative existent: that is to say, an object of consciousness". 31 Sartre supports his claims with a brief analysis of the cogito as a reflective consciousness in opposition to both Husserl and Descartes. This occurs by explaining how the I never appears except on the occasion of a reflective act. For example, I am now absorbed in the reading of this essay. I am not, then, reflecting on my consciousness. However, when I make this reflection I can attempt to recall the circumstances of my reading, my attitude, the lines that I was reading. In this way I recall not only the object of my consciousness but also a certain part of an unreflected consciousness, because the objects could 120 ROBERT E. KIERNAN only be perceived by it and therefore are relative to it. "That consciousness must not be posited as object of reflection. On the contrary, I must direct my attention to the revived objects, but without losing sight of the unreflected consciousness, by joining in a sort of conspiracy with it and by drawing up an inventory of its contents in a non-positional manner." Hence, assumed is the triple structure of the conscious act: first an unreflected act of reflection, without an I, which is secondly followed by and at the same time is the object of that consciousness and then thirdly reflected upon, yet without losing its own object, as a reflecting consciousness. Hence, what the reflecting consciousness reflects upon is a new object, not reflected consciousness, as it in-itself is absolute and does not require reflective consciousness to exist; and equally not the same object of that reflected consciousness, or what Sartre calls the transcendental ego, the L 32 Thus Sartre may conclude that the I is an existent of the concrete type: "undoubtedly different from the existence of mathematical truths but no less real". Further, the I is always apprehended in an inadequate way as existing behind a reflected consciousness and never really lucidly apparent to us, and that the I must therefore fall before the stroke of the phenomenological reduction. If it is not apparent as an object to consciousness immediately, if the epoch~ does not reveal that "I have consciousness of this paper" but rather that "there is consciousness of this paper", it is outside of the brackets, a3 In a clearer definition, Sartre refers to Heidegger's work, which obviously influenced his concern with the world rather than with ideas. Sartre writes: The ego is to psychical objects what the world is to things. But the appearance of the world in the background of things is rather rare. 34 In fact, this rare appearance of the world in the background is well described by Heidegger as the point at which Dasein takes an "ecstatic" view of the way in which it is in the world, as Heidegger's d~scription is not unlike Sartre's reflecting on the reflected. In fact, Sartre uses Heideggerian terminology when he calls the appearance of the ego an "horizonal" state, a6 While this definition is clearer, it is not yet lucid. Perhaps this is due to the very quality of the ego which itself is elusive. Or perhaps it is due to the very quality of consciousness which is more elusive still. It is the latter which seems to prevail. Consciousness as one's "interiority" is what Sartre calls a contradictory composite. "Absolute interiority never has an outside. It can be conceived MARX AND SARTRE 121 only by itself." While this seems to be true theoretically, according to Sartre's prior construction, he introduces an astonishingly simplistic and yet convincing argument to support it. He writes, "... this is why we cannot apprehend the consciousness of Others (for that reason only, and not because bodies separate us.)". 37 We will fred that this argument is repeated amidst countless others only to be the most solid again and again. Noteworthy, however, is his analysis of attempts to step back and view interiority from a vantage point other than myself which fails in that I always drag myself with me in my withdrawal. I cannot escape myself as it clings eternally, no matter how far or fast I run. Descartes falls short by the same arguments. If the ! or ego is merely on the horizon of the cogito and not the producer of conscious spontaneity, then ergo sum does not follow. Sartre states bluntly: "Consciousness produces itself facing the I and goes towards it, goes to rejoin it. That is all one can say". Nor, claims Sartre, is the ego even the owner of consciousness; it is only the object of consciousness. Thus, the greatest French philosopher falls by the wayside. The I of his consciousness was no more certain for him than was that of his medieval teacher. It was only more intimate. 38 We may conclude with Sartre's own summary that "transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity. It determines its existence at each instant, without our being able to conceive anything before it. Thus each instant of our conscious life reveals to us creation ex nihilo. Not a new arrangement, but a new existence". 39 The significance of this conclusion is multifaceted. We will see in Being and Nothingness that this spontaneity becomes a massive freedom which tortures man throughout his life. In the Critique it shall become manifest in reciprocal relations with others to the extent that the other's spontaneity threatens the very existence of mine in a horrifying fashion. In fact, Sartre, at the end of Transcendence of the Ego, refers to "certain theorists of the extreme left" who have reproached phenomenology for being an idealist philosophy. Sartre proves to the contrary that his phenomenology (like Marx's Hegelianism) is directly dependent upon the world for its existence. The me of Sartre's ego must draw its whole content from the world. "No more is needed in the way of a philosophical foundation for an ethics and a politics which are absolutely positive." ~ Having now established these Husserlian roots, we may move forward to our second topic and Sartre's incorporation of the "Body" into this spontaneity, or the synthesis of man. Q 122 ROBERT E. KIERNAN Taking only what has been presented, Sartre would probably fall prey, regardless of his aftemote, to reproaches of idealism. Such reproaches would be rightly applied by those ignorant of Being and Nothingness. However, in this work, and especially in the second chapter of the third part, entitled 'Being-for-Others: the Body', we fred an essential clarification of Sartre's position. In fact, many critics, including this one, have suggested that this third chapter is the most unique, profound and significant of all of Sartre's writings. His synthesis of Hegel, Hussed, and Heidegger is not only original but most applicable to man in the twentieth century "situation". While the central thesis of Being and Nothingness is the dual structure of man, pour-soil en-soi, in terms of consciousness, we fred that matter is bound intrinsically in this consciousness through the pour-soi which finds itself most vividly in the body. Since he has already established the fact that consciousness is never isolated from the world, due to the contingency of the world, and at the same time every act of consciousness reveals being, he must seek to define man between these two extremes, much like Plato did in The Sophist yet within a new situation. By reconciling the body with this absolute spontaneity, Sartre finds his major problem of dualism overcome and this frees him to deal with the more pertinent problem of the estrangement of man from man, and man from society. Let us then follow Sartre's analysis of the body. By way of three separate definitions, each of which is an elaboration of the previous one, Sartre structures his analysis. The basic problem lies in the fact that "I try to unite my consciousness not with my body but with the body of Others" .41 When we speak of arms and legs, brains and intestines, we are referring to things in the midst of the world. My body, however, is not a thing in the world because it is that by which things are revealed to me. A simple example: to touch and to be touched or to feel that one is touching and to feel that one is touched, give us two separate phenomena, which become meaningless if they are united. By letting our body be that of others, however, we can let it be, at once, a thing and that which reveals things. The contradiction is resolved, yet not escaped as our bodies are still not ours. We will return to the concept of others when we complete our definition of the body, "Being-for-Itself' or, as Sartre prefers, "Facticity".42 Initially, claims Sartre, we must make our point of departure the primary relation to the in-itself or being-in-the-world. This relation is the for-itself. By denying that it is being, the for-itself makes there be a world. This is accomplished by nikilating being-in-itself by which the for-itself brings MARX AND SARTRE 123 Nothingness into the w o r d in that it can only know the world by knowing what it is not. It is, then, the absolute event of the in-itself which not only lies at the foundation of the for-itself, but also remains at the heart of the foritself as its original contingency.43 Not even in the reflecting cogito may the for-itself find or know itself. It must always return to the in-itself. Yet, at the same time the world would not appear to me as world if it were not nihilated as not Being by the for-itself. Hence, there is contingency on either side. The world that is presented to me is one which makes me simultaneously totally unjustifiable and totally responsible for my being. My freedom is massive, yet absurd. In a certain way then, the world presents itself to me through the for-itself as ordered to my being in its paradoxical fashion. It may now be said that this order of the world is my body on the level of the foritself. The body would then be defined as "the contingent from which is assumed the necessity of my contingency. The body is merely the for-itself and nothing else." In this way the body may never be known, just as the for-itself was never to be known in its own right. It is the body here, which I nihilate. "It is the fact that I am nothing without having to be what I am and yet in so far as I have to be what I am, I am without having to be." 44 This definition is even more paradoxical and less definitive than letting our body be for others. But there is more. In order to account for the phenomenon of sensation, Sartre first proves that the use of the sensation of the Other is invalid as his sensation must be accounted for by our sensation in a circular fashion which necessitates the existence of our sensation. In fact, he even attempts a brief refutation of the concept of sensation itself as a bastard existent between subject and object which was dreamed up by the psychologist. 4s Rather, to what we take as sensation, Sartre gives the name "orientation". While the eye cannot see itself (Comte) it can give us an orientation to the order of seen objects. This orientation is not to the sense apparatus, the eye, for example, but rather to my very being as for-itself, as expressed in the body. "It is this contingency between necessity and the freedom of my choice that we call sense. ''46 While each object must appear to me "all at once" for it to be known (necessity) it must also appear in a particular perspective; that is, it must be in-the-midstof-the-word if I am to perceive it since my senses are contingent upon my for-itself or body. My freedom of choice, then, is my ability to perceive that object as object or as background - e.g., I can perceive the table as object or the table as background which is supporting the vase. 124 ROBERT E. KIERNAN The body then orientates the world as it makes the world. In this way m y for-itself, which I am, must come into the world not only by nihilating it but also by orienting it. In this sense, " m y b o d y is everywhere in the world; it is over there in the fact that the lamppost hides the bush which grows along the path, as well as in the fact that the roof up there is above the windows of the sixth floor or in the fact that a passing car swerves from fight to left behind the truck or that the woman who is crossing the street appears smaller than the man who is sitting on the sidewalk in front o f the cafe".47 It is out of this sensation as orientation that Sartre derives our second definition of the body as that which is co-extensive with the world in that it is spread across all things while remaining condensed into a single point "which all things indicate and which I am, without being able to know it". 4s But we have now arrived at the classical Cartesian body which is merely a tool o f the soul. Again another paradox: that the w o r d is merely instruments, necessitates making the body an instrument. On the other hand, no instrument can be revealed in its "cardinal meaning" without it being made practical and active - e.g., to pound a nail or sow seed - which necessitates that we make the body something that we use. Still we are bound by Descartes. But Sartre counters that this instrument is not one which we u s e . . , it is one which we are. We can only know it, in objective terms, emptily because it is still our for-itself. At the same time, however, the body gives itself in the very ordering of the w o r d , according to necessity and free choice. The body then is not known or used but rather lived. 49 This gives us a p o i n t o f view. But, the for-itself is also a point o f departure, in that it is what I am not to the extent that I am not what I am for I have nihilated myself in an attempt to regain m y in.itself. In this way m y body as for-itself must always be surpassed if I am to be in the world. My b o d y is made the past from which I can project into the future (which ultimately entails re-surpassing m y body again). Now at last we can explicate Sartre's full definition o f the body: The body is the contingent form which is taken up by the necessity of my contingency. We can never apprehend this contingency as such in so far as the body is for us; for we are a choice, and for us, to be is to choose ourselves... But this inapprehensible body is precisely the necessity that there be a choice, that I do not exist all at once. In this sense my finitude is the condition of my freedom, for there is no freedom without choice; and in the same way that the body conditions consciousness as pure consciousness of the world, it renders consciousness possible even in its very freedom, so . . . Thus it cannot be said that the b o d y is the tool of consciousness, nor that MARX AND SARTRE 125 consciousness can be of the body in knowing the body. Consciousness rather exists its body. It is not the same relationship as the body-as-point-of-view. It is an existential relation. By this Sartre means that while the body is part of the non-thetic structures of self-consciousness, it is not identifiable with them. Yet to be conscious of the body is more akin to consciousness of a sign where not only is the sign surpassed to reach its meaning but it is even neglected in the conscious act. That is, I am not conscious of the red light when I brake the car. Rather I have consciousness that I must stop. In the same way, non-positional consciousness is conscious (of) the body only as that which it nihilates to make itself what it is; namely consciousness. In Sartre's words: "consciousness (o 0 the body is lateral and retrospective; the body is the neglected, the 'passed by in silence'. And yet the body is what this consciousness is; it is not even anything except the body. The rest is nothingness and silence", sl Lest this sort of ontologizing not be self-evident to the reader, Sartre supplies us with several very real examples of how consciousness lives the body. The first is through pain. If I have pain "in my eyes" while I am reading, it does not come out of any physical contact with the world. It may be even outside of the strain of the eye muscles to move the eye across the page. Most simply it is the "translucent matter of consciousness" expressing itself to the world and itself through its body. Its being-there, or connection with the world in the act of reading, is brought directly back to the foundation of being. In this way unity is affirmed not in that the body is known to consciousness, but in that the body is suffered by consciousness. The pain exists over and beyond all acts of knowledge and attention as it dominates these acts by "slipping into" each one of them. It becomes that inescapable present in which the body is consciousness. "Nowhere else", writes Sartre, "shall we come closer to touching that nihilation of the in-itself by the foritself and that apprehension of the for-itself by the in-itself which nourishes the very nihilation", s2 Even more banal yet just as primordial is the apprehension of that "insipid taste" which accompanies me daily and which I cannot escape despite my efforts. It is mine exclusively and I cannot even account for it in terms of others. It is that which Sartre calls "nausea"; a dull and inescapable nausea which perpetually reveals my body to my consciousness. While we strive always to escape this nausea with either physical pleasure or pain, we f'md that even these distractions when existed by consciousness become clear to 126 ROBERT E. KIERNAN us only upon the field of nausea which reveals all of the world. Thus, Sartre has come to say that it is not the metaphor of nausea which we use to describe our physiological disgust;inversely,it is the entanglement and interdependence of our in-itself and for-itself which produce the "foundation of this nausea on which all concrete and empirical nauseas (nauseas caused by spoiled meat, fresh blood, excrement, etc.) are produced and make us vomit", s3 Another possible means of escaping this primordial nausea is to live in terms of the Other as our initial problematic shows us. By thinking of our body in terms of the Other's body we can deny this internal pain of our consciousness encountering a necessarily absurd and contingent world and thereby escape nausea, at least temporarily. This may occur in two ways; either sadism and hate or masochism and love, which Sartre explores in the next chapter ('Concrete Relations with Others'). We either lose ourselves in the other by making him a personal project or mirror ourselves in the other by making his project a part of our own. These two relations necessarily encompass each other, causing any two people who attempt "intersubjectivity" to jump endlessly from one extreme to another. In either case the nausea is calmed momentarily by the advent of the relationship and then reaffirmed with the relationship's solidification, causing the victim to jump to the other extreme to escape, and so on. s4 Even if the "they" or "we" self is attained, it is only possible if another Other is the object of this see-sawing status. It is precisely this status from which all other relations are determined. This is clearly manifest in the significance of the Other's "look", which will serve as the conclusion to this section. The look or gaze of the Other is not merely, for Sartre, the actual contact of eye with my body. Rather it is an omnipresent and omniscient eye which sees all so that I may see myself. Yet it is never the object of the "eye" which is looking. It is the subject or consciousness of the Other which always perceives me as an object. For example, when I am peering into a keyhole on my hands and knees and I hear a noise on the stairs, I am startled into a mood of embarrassment and shame even before the person comes around the corner and even if there is really no one there. The object of my fear is the other's subject or me becoming mere object to that subject. In the same way, however, I make every other an object to me by that effort to overcome my anguish]nausea which is successful until the other reaffirms his subjectivity (or, better, I reaffirm it by being-looked-at) by looking at me, whereupon the roles are reversed. In different words: I exteriorize my interior in the other's MARX AND SARTRE 127 body as it is easier (no contradiction); yet, when I attempt to re-interiorize it, the Other's very being, manifested in his look, prevents his body from being wrested from its consciousness. In Sartre's language this becomes: The Other whom I recognize "in order to refuse him" in his consciousness "is before all else the one for whom my for-itself is. Not only do I make myself not-be this Other being by denying that he is me, I make myself not-be a being who is making himself not-be me." The consequences of this double negation is either, one, that I make myself "not-be a certain being, and then he is an object for me and I lose my object-hess for him" (or sadism) or, two, "this being is indeed the other and makes himself not-be me, in which case I become object for him and he loses his own object-hess (or masochism)", ss In either case the re-interiorization fails. This, for Sartre, describes the greater part of all of man's activity. Man is left a unified yet contradictory ontological structure. His life's work: to dispel this contradiction; to rid himself of self-alienation by elimi. nating the nausea as the way in which his consciousness exists its body and therefore the world. However, he is doomed to fail due to man's situation, that is, his being-in-the-world. We are still confronted, due to the very nature of consciousness, with two radically distinct modes of being: "The For-itself which has to be what it is - i.e. which is what it is not and which is not what it is - and the In-itself which is what it is". Yet the For-itself is not autonomous. To the contrary. "The For-itself is like a tiny nihilation which has its origin at the heart of being. This nihilation causes a total upheaval to happen to the In-itself. This upheaval is the world. ;'s6 Without the world, however, there would be no conscious being, as our point of departure rested on the notion that consciousness is always consciousness o f something. Consciousness of nothing would be absolute nothing. THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL For a moment consider what has already been established. Initially we dealt with Marx; we found Hegelian roots in his concept of alienation which was, most fundamentally, an ontological alienation of reflecting being (species) and natural being (or one dependent upon the world). This being was found to use a process of reification through labor on nature in an effort to live this dialectic. In a free or classless society this was possible, but within the confines of capitalism the labor became estranged. In this way Other beings 128 ROBERT E. KIERNAN were given greater significance in terms of preventing re-interiorization, as man now saw himself in terms of the Other. Sartre first establishes an absolutely spontaneous entity at the radical core of man, called consciousness. However, this consciousness presupposes a world to be conscious of. A dualism is established only in that neither consciousness nor the world can exist without the other. Ultimately, they are integral elements of each other as Sartre discovers in his analysis of the foritself as body. Since this integral relationship is a difficult one for man to realize, due to the fact that it necessitates living a life which is ceaselessly reaffirming itself (not an easy task to say the least), man tends to escape this life in favor of an Other's life, which he can view as his object, thereby avoiding his own contradiction of subject/object. The Other is then given the status of that which becomes for man his life task, even though that task in-itself is a difficult one as it must also be eternally reaffirmed every time the Other's look apprehends us (or every time we are apprehended by the look). In the end, both philosophers here reach a position where man becomes unavoidably dependent upon Others as he attempts to re-interiorize, or know himself. This dependency is the theme of the work of both men in their later lives. Unfortunately, Marx did not know of the "philosophy of existence" and concentrated his work on the economic and social analysis of Capital, through which he made a monumental contribution. Sartre, aware of existentialism by historical advantage (or disadvantage) also concentrated on the manifestation of Otherness in economic and social areas yet with the added advantage of his existential ontolo~r. This is where the real significance of his later work is found; in that he has (as was claimed here) integrated existentialism into the larger philosophy of Marxism. Both men have the same end in mind. The difference comes in the fact that Sartre must also reconcile what he believes to be man's situation with that end. The first three chapters of The Critique of the Dialectical Reason enable us to ground the reconciliation of situation and Marxism. They reveal more harmony than dissonance in the two philosophies. While this comparison of points of departure does not, of course, completely reconcile the two thinkers, it provides at least this much: there is in the points of departure a common denominator allowing a comparison of the whole of the Critique with Marx's later works. MARX AND SARTRE 129 Hence our outline shall follow the basic course of the first three chapters of Book One ('From Individual PraMs to Practico-Inert'), which are: (1) 'Individual PraMs as Totalization', (2) 'Human Relations as a Mediation between Different Sectors of Materiality', and (3) 'Matter as Totalized Totality: a First Encounter with Necessity'. The first chapter is the point of departure for the entire work. It assumes a fundamental relation of man to nature, his world, or matter (whichever is preferable), which is dialectical in its workings. Sartre claims that tile crucial discovery of his dialectical investigation is that "man is 'mediated' by things to the same extent as things are 'mediated' by man". s7 This statement is not only a statement of Marx but of Sartre's own pour-soi/en-soi dialectic. Evidence for the validity of this assertion will occupy the remainder of this essay. Furthermore, this mediation will be set in action by the concept of need which is, "The first totalizing relation between the material being, man, and the material ensemble of which he is a part", s8 Already we have a def'mition which incorporates natural/being and pour-soi (material being), species/ being and en-soi (man), and nature and situation (material ensemble). While the interplay of all of these concepts is very complex, this analogy is not off-center. It should be noted, however, that we will later see prams identified with pour-soi and matter with en-soi but this is only in terms of reciprocity, where matter becomes for the pour-soi through its action the objectification of the en-soi which is only recognizable as negation. The confusion must be avoided; and the process is what makes the distinction. Need is described then as the negation of the negation, much in the same way that Being is def'med in Being and Nothingness. It appears as an interior lack on the part of the prams which may be transcended by interaction with the practico-inert or matter. Whether this is viewed as a lack of food, satisfied by meat, or a lack of being, satisfied by re-interiorized objectification, it remains consistent with both Marx and the ontological Sartre. It is in need that the world or nature or matter is "revealed as passive totality by an organic being seeking its being in it". s9 Need, then, drives all mediation as its primary source of motivation. Need may also be found to be at the foundation of man's project in ontological terms, yet it is a contradictory or dialectical relationship where neither matter nor man is unified without the other. "The unity of the project endows the practical field with a quasi-synthetic unity, and the crucial moment of labor is that in which the organism makes itself inert (the man 130 ROBERT E. K I E R N A N applies his weight to the lever) in order to transform the surrounding inertia". Contrary to Engels, however, Sartre will affirm the fact that the origin of this "negation of matter/negation of man" dialectic is in man's praxis not nature's dialectic. The example given to illustrate this point is that of the forester who by chopping (labor) a particular tree in the forest, recognizes the totality of the forest, and nature as a whole, by negating one of its parts. Further, he totalizes himself through the implicit negation and his own negation (the labor on the tree). Both the forest and the forester remain intact and whole after the labor, e° Hence the "Individual Praxis is Totalization". The second chapter ('Human Relations as a Mediation Between Different Sectors of Materiality') is as brief as the first and basically serves only to foreshadow the importance that history will take on as seen in the light of praxis, mediation, matter and the Other's praxis. In this section Sartre establishes human relations as a phenomenon running concomitant with history rather than as a product of history. Again this is contrary to Engels and even the later Marx (to some scholars) but still more widely acceptable today, since history has shown us the dangers of determinism of which the scholar of the 19th century was unaware, blinded by his new excitement with the birth of social science. Sartre claims to be "inspired by Marx" when he writes that "men make history precisely to the extent that it makes them". This is only fitting in view of the dialectic established above. Sartre gives a fantastically lucid example in his definition of language which, wiaile it is made by the Other to convey his meaning to me, is interiorized by me as a meaning different from his actual intention and then used by me to convey a meaning totally different, which the Other will in turn cognate in yet another, different form. In this way, language becomes inert and worked upon while at the same time it determines us in the very same manner that we think. 6~ The topic of our account however, is relations and we must consequently take up what Sartre calls 'Duality and the Third Party'. In the same way that history is equally the result and condition of man's praxis, so are human relations. The example which Sartre believes to typify human relations is that of the man at the window who passively observes two workers below who are separated from each other by a high fence which precludes each knowing the other. The observer at the window observes these two men but he does not belong to their class, know their trades or how to do what they are doing. He does not even have the same worries as the two men. However, the fact MARX AND SARTRE 131 that the passive observer realizes this is enough to constitute them as part of his understanding. By negating them as not what I am, I realize both their being as not mine and my being as not theirs. In this way I am the link between them that brings their mutual ignorance into being. Also in this way I make of them an object in the same manner that the Other makes an object of me in Being and Nothingness. 62 This objectification unifies them in the us-object. The two are placed in the situation of reciprocity where the object of their labor as well as their subjective interiority is objectified and unified in a totality for the mediating third. This unity then is the result of the concrete, no t of some universal category called "mankind" or"humanity". In this analysis Husserl takes precedence over Hegel, as the mediating third or observer is that which creates a totality or unity as he recognizes what the worker is as well as what he himself is. The implicit recognition links man to man in a totalization. This is the universal which replaces any categorical imperative or notion of human nature. The mediating third only totalizes the reciprocity of the individual and his alienated counterpart by objectifying their praxes in matter. If the two men become means for each other, the reciprocity of exchange is established and there is no need for the third party to totalize or mediate their relationship as need and matter serve their purposes. When, however, either the two men are ignorant of each other or a conflict comes out of reciprocity - this appears in the next chapter as scarcity or competition due to the lack of or limits of matter - a mediating third is required to link the men together. Again, in the conclusion of this section, Sartre stresses the importance of the third as that which "maintains the objective meaning in things while at the same time constituting the group as totality". Always we must return then to the escape of being through Other's being as object for us. This objectification always occurs in and through matter although man himself is the antithesis of matter. The pour-soi is condemned constantly to manipulate matter as what it is not (being-in-situation) even though it is more than matter. It has no real constitution of its own and therefore must "hang" upon what it is not in order to be (or at least point to the en-soi). This is in no way inconsistent with the man of Being and Nothingness; rather, it is even more clearly def'med. As to Marx, it might seem awkward to define "species" as a link rather than an absolute. However, a close reading of the first manuscript reveals the great significance of matter as that upon which man must labor in order to produce universally and subsequently become " o f the species". 132 ROBERT E. KIERNAN Matter mediates between man's labor and his re-interiorization of that which is exteriorized in that act. Further, it should be noted that "species", understood as an absolute,is in direct contradiction to the refutation of the Hegelian Absolute Spirit of the third manuscript. Sartre admits that he must now define what types of relations are possible (and he does so later in the text), yet he reminds the reader that "the human relation really exists between all men and that it is no more than the relation of praxis to itself". By this he implies not only that the reciprocity of individual praxis gives us the totalizing process by which relations are totalized but also that the praxis of each man is the same in this process. That is, any "praxis as free development of the organism has now totalized the material environment in the form of a practical field". 63 That this material milieu is the first totalization of human relations is the topic of the next chapter. The investigation has now been reversed. We began with the individual praxis as the complete inteUigibflity of the dialectic and realized through that fact that in his first act the individual totalizes Others through matter, that "between men there is the indef'mite adherence of each to each" or "matter".64 In this vein Sartre must clarify the process in which matter becomes involved in human relations. The next chapter gives the reader the outline of such a process in describing 'Matter as Totalized Totality'. As revealed in the subtitle of this third chapter, 'A First Encounter With Necessity', Sartre def'mes the pervasive theme for the interpretation of all human relations in history. This is his theory of scarcity or the significance of the inhuman side of our existence, the inert. This factor, Sartre feels, has been neglected by contemporary Marxism. By considering worked material as anti-praxis, one can see the result of scarcity in the motivation of "a new and necessary moment of praxis". 6s The environment in which we enter into human relations is relationally defined by scarcity. That is, if there is not enough of a certain matter which full'ills both my need and yours, I must negate your need and thus use you to satisfy my own. This negation of the Other is transmitted to him from me through the inhuman or matter. ~ We may define scarcity as the relation of man through the presence of other men in the practico-inert. Since there is not enough for all, I am threatened to be negated by Other men. The material possibility of my being is therefore annihilated "through the annihilation of an object of primary necessity". All of this makes impossible "the passive coexistence of a totality of individuals in a group".67 MARX AND SARTRE 133 Thus my own activity is tumed against me in this milieu of scarcity as it is returned to me "as Other" through the social milieu in that the Other is the same as I am. I discover through our confrontation in matter that we have the same need. And yet, he still is Other as he carries in him the "demonic threat of death". We are unable to escape this devil as he is bound to us through our situation or the practico-inert. "Matter totalizes men falsely, or inertly as molecules of wax are inertly united eternally by a seal". Man is threatened here and everywhere by the most terrifying species of all - his own. 6s Violence then can always be justified as counter-violence in that it is a retaliation against the menacing threat of the Other. Yet at the same time I cannot justify destroying the Other as man because he remains paradoxically representative of the human element of me by which I recognized his threat. It is in fact "myself that I try to destroy in him, so as to prevent him from destroying me in my own body". 69 More subtle examples of this violence are seen later in reference to birth control, abortion, and war. 7° The "veritable domination of man by the interiorized material environment" allows Sartre to carry over this material quality of scarcity to the character of man. In a way he seems to be making his own the Manichean notion of incarnated Evil. 71 This is found in the philosophical statement of the theme of No Exit. The Other's look of Being and Nothingness becomes more powerful than that which instills mere embarrassment and shame. It becomes threatening to my very being in the social situation just as Marx's Other became in estrangement. This point we shall call the mere enrichment of prior ideas due to the integration of Marx. The potential was there in the "look" of the ontology. It took the situation to bring it to its ultimate extension. When this look becomes realized in a group through conflict for the same matter - Sartre gives the example of the threat of the Chinese farmers to the Chinese nomads, when both groups found themselves in each other's situation, that is on the same land - a new praxis is born called "war". This situation which we interiorized as Other is one which is extremely bleak. However, it is undeniably the situation of our historical period. As the fundamental determination of man "the socialization of production does not put an end to it except possibly through a long dialectical process of which we cannot yet know the outcome". 72 The pessimism on Sartre's part gives a fundamental difference in attitude when compared to that of Marx. This is the topic of the next section, 'Scarcity and Marxism'. Sartre claims that the historical investigations of Marx and Engels did not 134 ROBERT E. KIERNAN ever reach an irreducible conclusion such as that of scarcity. He writes that it is worth observing that "the schemata of prehistory, antiquity, the Middle Ages and the preeapitalist period are seldom presented by Marx in an intelligible form". 73 This is not to say that the presentation of the evolution of events was not correct but rather that after it is complete there should exist some reasoning as to the why of those events. Engels in Anti-Diihring does no better and perhaps even worse, as he implies a positivist law whereby the "speed with which primitive society changes is dependent upon the speed of the changes of natural products into industrial ones". 74 Moreover, Engels concludes that the division of labor, rather than self-estrangement, is at the bottom a division of classes. This is in direct contradiction to Sartre's analysis of the previous chapter which gave man not only equal participation with nature in the final product of history, but also the initial negation by which the historical process was started. This is the question which Sartre calls upon Marx to answer. Sartre feels that Marx's answers tend only to "amplify and exaggerate the problem, by making the temporal order of different histories seem more completely contingent" and that his own answer in the form of scarcity or negativity is more revealing. Because of their over-reaction to the Hegelian concept of negativity in the critique of Hegel as well as in Engel's Anti-Diihring, the two men could not openly consider negativity inherent in man. Man is the organism which, because it has intedorized scarcity, is able to kill other men for its own preservation or be killed due to its vulnerability via its threat to the Other. Sartre believes that Engels was correct in not following the absurd Robinsonades of D~ihring ("otherwise un imbdcile"), but blind to the one concept Diihring rightly upheld: negativity as the root of violence. Violence is not merely an external factor caused by matter. It is interiorized by man through matter as a principle of Evil, as seen in every Other as threat to my being. 75 Sartre only wishes Marxism to return to its original notion of the re-interiorization of nature after it has become estranged, where man then becomes estranged from himself. This is interiorized scarcity as the interiorization of estrangement in a capitalist system. Marx never feels that it is necessary to return to this after all of his work describing the nature and man which capitalism produces. If he had retraced his steps and return to his point of departure he would clearly have seen the point which Sartre later makes. Thus, "this means that scarcity, as the negation of man in man by matter, is a principle of dialectical intelligibility". 76 This is not to say that Sartre has MARX AND SARTRE 135 found an original movement or even a valid interpretation for the history which has already been written. It merely considers that History is compatible with the individual praxis as it makes, and is made by, History. Sartre leaves the application of this notion to other historians, and to his own work on Flaubert. 77 While Capital proved to be the ultimate explanation of the way in which production, as a vehicle to negate the negation (scarcity), fails by causing a further scarcity and with it further alienation, the Critique will attempt to show not only the negative aspects of this matter but also the way in which it positively conditions man so that class structure becomes not only possible but necessary. This is the result of both the negative aspect of labor in alienated objectification but also of the positive aspect of the presence of worked matter. 7s Sartre ends this section in a footnote containing the most concise and lucid presentation of scarcity anywhere in the book. It also contains,however, a disclaimer as to his work being labeled pejoratively, "political economy" or "pre-Marxist analysis", due to the heavy emphasis he has placed on the notion of scarcity. He claims that his structure is "but merely throwing into relief negativity as the implicit motive force of the historical dialectic and making it intelligible. In the context o f scarcity all of the structures of any given society depend upon the mode of production". 79 Thus Sartre neither opposes nor completes Marxist theory but only reintegrates the individual of the earlier Marx into the later historical dialectic. With scarcity defined and within our grasp historically and individually, we may now approach the core of the problem or 'Worked Matter as the Alienated Objectification of Individual and Collective Praxis'. Again we must return to the position of the "negation of man by man", but this time with historical-material reference. Sartre refers to the great iron and coal revolution which was supposed to f'fll the urgent need and eliminate scarcity but which instead caused enclosure movements and drove the farmer out of his habitat and into the city, where his interior and exterior alienation became intensified as scarcity. Scarcity negates the farmer because of the Other in the city which thus challenges the farmer's initiative. This negation is at the core of the farmer's praxis which is directly the result of the iron-coal complex. The attempt to counteract the original negation has resulted in a further negation, s° This situation is also present in the example of slavery as a pre-industrial attempt to eliminate scarcity. Here the slave is reduced to "subhuman" by the very way in which he is captured. The Other or Master is 136 ROBERT E. KIERNAN then considered inhuman by the slave even after he realizes that he is the Master's truth. The Master is also his own truth in that he had to labor to obtain his slave. Thus we cannot follow the dialectic as Hegel established it. By examining the strong dialectical interplay of man and machines Sartre will show how praxis is the unity of matter and man. We shall see how man invests in matter the power to hit him back later. Finally he will show how machines "by their structure and functions, determine the nature of their servants as the rigid and imperious future of undetermined individuals and, thereby, create men". sl Beginning with the section entitled, 'Matter as Inverted Praxis', Sartre gives the reader a more concrete example of how matter becomes the dialectically inert counterpart of man. In China, again, peasants cleared thousands of acres of land in the countryside in order to "conquer" the nature which prevented them from farming the land. This they did for thousands of years. The ultimate result was, however, that the land was ravaged by a sequence of floods which flowed unchecked across the treeless countryside. This was not foreseen and it eliminated the condition of the possibility for further farming without the necessity of more labor in the form of dams and dikes whose counterfinality would be unforeseeable. In this way the "peasant becomes his own material fatality; he produces the floods which destroy him". 82 This is the first relation of man to the non-human or that in which Nature becomes the negation of man to the extent that man posits himself as antiphusis in the counter-finality of his actions. This relationship becomes even more dramatic in the relation of man to precious metals as Sartre's analysis of the Spanish gold illustrates. The gold is considered, writes Sartre, "as simultaneously products, commodities, signs, powers and instruments and as themselves becoming exigencies, constraints, undertakings and non-human activities", s3 This will be the flagrant example of anti-praxis for Sartre. First of all the Peruvian gold discovered by Spain was given human qualities in that "it had volume, could be counted and was containable". Spain became thecontainer which was, through individual praxis expressed in institutions, given a shape. In this way also the gold was inscribed with praxis as it was given a "value in weight and volume". "Man loses himself so that the human thing might exist in the form of coinage here". 84 Again we may make re. ference at this point to the relationship of the pour-soi to the en-soi which also loses itself in order that the en-soi become Being. The sado-masochism described earlier becomes the precise dialectical reciprocity with which man MARX AND SARTRE 137 inscribes meaning on matter and matter on him. Rather than the look as that which inverts the relationship, here we find counter-finality as the inverting force. The reverse of reification in man occurs here as the human element reveals itself in the thing. In economic terms the accumulation of an excess or surplus devalues the coinage in the container, causing those outside the container to obtain it - i.e. accept it in lieu of products as speculative investments - while it is most readily accessible due to its deflated status. In Sartre's terms and just as accurately, the accumulation of the whole devalues the particular which, from the Spanish perspective,flees its container. The gold leaves as the jobs for men become scarce as a result of the devaluation. Hence it seems as if the gold is pursuing the men who invested quality into it as they leave due to the counter-finality of their action. The original praxis is still reverberating within the matter with the same original ideological justification: the more gold you have, the richer you are. This is a marginal quality which turns praxis back on itself and transforms ends into counter-ends. Sartre calls this the bewitched quality as of the matter which once inscribed with human properties by man (man must lose his humanity in the matter) is never to give up that man's project. They return to haunt him eternally as not what he had originally endowed upon them .86 At bottom a paradox is present here in that when I reach out and discover matter, I also discover the Other in that matter, as if an Other's consciousness has become embedded in the matter that it handled. This matter in which the mind of man is condensed becomes destroyed in both its finality and its counter-finality. The paradox is that while man is somehow more than matter he is condemned to hang on to matter in which he again encounters man. This is not, however, a dualism. A simple recollection of Sartre's analysis of the body as the "lived situation" (of) the consciousness will clarify this point. In the Critique Sartre quotes de Waelhen's comment on Heidegger's attraction to Marxism as it explains "that Other Being in me and that man is himself only through Being which is not him". Man invests in matter all of his praxis which is in turn returned to him after being objectified. The negation itself comes from man as it is posited in matter which may return it as counterfinality, due to man's praxis changing himself and the praxis and need of Others in the context of scarcity. Man, then, "lives in a universe where the future is a thing, where the idea is an object, and where violence on matter is the 'mid-wife' of history", a7 In this way man truly is the product of his 138 ROBERT E. KIERNAN product, as worked matter "becomes, by and for men, the fundamental motive force for all history". To remain clear in his stand against Engels and the Bolsheviks, Sartre restates his explanation of domination of man at the original end of the dialectic. "The movement o f materiality, in fact, derives from men" is the statement that reassures the reader that it is not a science of Engels or Lenin with which he is dealing,s8 Rather, he remains true not only to his original ontology of freedom but also to the earlier Marx. This strange phenomenon of counter-finality is the last of Sartre's concerns in this section. While need (in both Marxian and Sartrean ontological and anthropological meanings) still dictates all inventive praxis but now in a temporal fashion in that the man who needs a stronger pump invents the steam engine as a "future objectification of a past praxis (need or lack of) in a realization which demands realization in the future", counter-f'lnality is found in the inherent Other-finality of each objectified praxis. In this way, it is finality against others. For example "the over-industrialization of a country is a counter-finality for the rural classes who become proletarianized to precisely the extent that it is a f'mality for the richest landowners because it causes them to increase their own productivity", s9 This is all due to the milieu of scarcitY in which the praxis originally determines its finality through labor. One of the other examples Sartre so neatly invokes is that of air pollution. The bourgeoisie can escape the coal dust of the Pittsburgh area on the weekends while the proletariat must live and work in it. But this ability to escape the counter-finality is a finality for the bourgeois executive as it further separates the classes thus making his privileged status - being-able-to-escape - an advantage for which he works. In earlier times the smoke of the chimney was precisely the objectification of man's power over nature and, of course, had to be named as a sort of negative exigency in contradiction. Hence, it seems that every finality and counter-finality are inextricably connected so that every finality implies a counter-finality with the re-intervention of man. Reciprocity appears on every level in Dialectical Reason. Before going on to Necessity as a new structure of dialectical investigation, there is the concept of lnterest as a "certain relation between man and thing in a social field". The dialectical possibility of this idea is given in the existence of the organism since the organism "has its being-outside-itself-in-theworld, insofar as its possibilities of survival are given outside itself in its milieu". 9° This notion is precisely what Marx meant by natural being or a MARX AND SARTRE 139 being dependent upon nature to maintain itself. The entire conception, we shall see, is also found already in Marx. By trying to enlarge this eternal material existence the organism makes that materiality more and more essential (to Marx the larger the field of nature, the more universal man became). Consequently when the organism encounters Others within the field which is essentially his, he must find them unessential, which causes him to be more and more inhuman toward them. Usually this is supported by capitalistic competition where the same object is essential/unessential to the competitors. Hence, interest implies both dependence upon and a negation of the Other. Sartre gives the example of the writer who defends his ideas in a book which will place them in history. To take refuge from history or negate its negation of him, he must depend upon history to carry his thoughts in the books. It is as such that Sartre defines interest as a "negative practical relation between man and the practical field mediated by the thing which he is outside, or, conversely, a relation between the thing and other things in the social field, mediated by its human project" .91 Sartre adds that while the machine is of interest to the employer it necessarily cannot be of interest to the worker who is the "victim of his industrialization as he is manipulated by the machine". 92 In fact, Sartre suggests that to be without particular interest, as the proletarian is, is the prerequisite for membership in that class. It is the tragic alienation devised by the bourgeoisie. "lt is not the interest o f the worker to work", Sartre writes in italics. "The situation is quite different to the bourgeoisie who has devised a counterfinality which will lead to the elimination of the worker's labor. By working the proletarian hastens that process. 9a The goal of the worker, then, is to change the status of his machine from machine-as-destiny to machine-asinterest. This, of course, necessitates the socialization of production. Man through activity is the only one who can reverse the tide of destiny and interest, but even then destiny cannot be totally escaped as it is the marker, along with interest, of the parameters of the practico-inert as def'med by labor.94 Bewitched matter is bound to recoil in the face of man and make of him destiny at some point in time. It is now clear that this analysis of matter requires that Necessity be the answer to our own direction of investigation. If we cannot investigate the dialect from individual praxes, then we must begin and end with Necessity. It is through necessity that matter totalizes man. Consider the people waiting at the bus stop. They all await the bus for different reasons; to go to 140 ROBERT E. KIERNAN work, to go from work, to go to the store, to go home, etc. Yet all look impatiently toward the corner around which the bus shall appear. Together they totalize the future matter by waiting and watching for it while at the same time that matter commands them to wait and to watch. Matter grips the people as inert objects as their looking cannot do anything to hasten the arrival of the bus. There are two events going on simultaneously. Man is making the bus by waiting and the bus is making man the object that waits. "The point is to conceive the praxis and its result from two inseparable points of view: that of objectification (or of man acting on matter) and that of objectivity (or of totalized matter acting on man)". 9s This is akin to the manner in which Marx shows in the first manuscript that man produces painfully his own estrangement. It is through such a dialectic that Sartre is able to make the statement (now famous): It is Madame Bovary who illuminates Flaubert, not the reverse.96 Sartre seems to return more directly to Hegel than to Marx at this point when defining exactly what alienation is. He leaves us with the remorseful comment, not unlike him, at the end of this section, that: "All of us spend our lives engraving our maleficent image on things, and it fascinates and bewilders us if we try to understand ourselves through it, although we are ourselves the totalizing movement which results in this particular objectification".97 In a footnote on this passage we fred again a reference to Being and Nothingness but this time more direct and even more illuminating. In fact, one would dare to say that the essentials needed for our 'marriage' are found there. What it claims is the following: first, the practical agent must transcend himself by action. This is a restatement of this whole chapter and one consistent with all of our reconciliation structures. But now Sartre writes directly in terms of Being and Nothingness that: "it is the For-itself, as agent, revealing itself initially as inert, or at best, as practico-inert, in the milieu of the Initself". 9s This is to say that the for-itself as praxis must act in order to transcend itself within the necessity required by its contingency or In-itself. Ontologically then, need is just as motivating. Yet, further, since the for-itself is primordially tied to the body as the way it exists the world, the inert materiality of man as the foundation of all knowledge of himself and thereby of alienated knowledge as well as knowledge of alienation is the situation of the for-itself. Necessity becomes for man, then, the "conceiving of oneself originally as other than one is and in the dimension of alterity". Sartre here MARX AND SARTRE 141 has made the final move. He has linked the ontological necessity with the social-anthropological need. Just as we concluded with Marx that the initial alienation of species being from natural being is the origin from which all other alienations proceed, we may say of Sartre that the pour-soi/en-soi dialectic is the original alienation from which all social alienation is derived. Sartre goes on further to warn that the uncautious reader may be misled by Being and Nothingness into believing that fundamental alienation is the result of some pre-natal choice. Rather, it "derives from the univocal relation of interiority which unites man as a practical organism with his environment". 99 This is the keynote to our thesis as it allows us to incorporate all of our above explanations into the Critique without contradiction. That it is found in a footnote is only a matter of Sartre's style in that each work remains independent of all the others. Still it is the term of the entire reconciliation as it allows us freely to incorporate species being/material being, pour-soi/en-soi and the world into one earth-shaking chord. From this point all that is left to establish is the nature of class-being as a conduit to the rest of the Critique. As Hegel would have said: man discovers his being-outside-himself as his truth and his reality. The inorganic presence of "worked" matter is ironically described and is man's truth. All of man's actions are taken against the mighty weight of the practico-inert which, if man remained passive, would crush the essence of his being in its relation to its situation - continually engagk. While the social materiality ultimately controls the worker in his destiny,there exists a glimmer of hope in the ability to transcend. Just as the species being supersedes its natural animal quality by reflecting upon its action, and the pour-soi transcends its contingent quality by negating the world, the worker may transcend his destiny by defining it as such, negating it through action and making it into interest. The mere passing into the future transcends the essence of the past, as Hegel rightly believed. In this way the individual praxis must transcend its situation so that the collective and group praxis may follow suit. Unfortunately, however, they are doomed to fail at least within the present situation of capitalism. 1°° Yet this failure does not preclude future attempts as "the freedom of action which ends in failure is simply freedom which fails, since the fundamental relation of the organism to its environment is univocal". Again we fred ourselves confronted with the primordial relationship of man and world which is indubitable. Failure only brings us back to this situation in order that we may attempt it again. This absolute Freedom of Being and Nothingness is still 142 ROBERT E. KIERNAN intact in that it causes man to realize even more profoundly the significance of his choices in the social realm. Freedom is required to be able to fail and it makes failure significant as it is correlated directly to freedom. All of this inertia comes about through the choice and action of being, inscribed in being as it is intefiorized by man. t°l When we see examples of the 19th century proletariat whose Being is selected by the machine he operates we do not observe this at a distance. Rather "we too comprehend it in terms of our invisible walls: we can understand every petrified limit of human relations in terms of the invisible limit which petrifies our own". 1°2 This discovery of our Being is usually very frightening as it often comes as our freedom fails and we fall back into our intimate relation with the practicoinert. "It reveals that what one did not know was something one knew all along." However, it is clear that above all one must always keep in mind that this "prefabricated objectivity does not prevent praxis from being free temporalization and effective reorganization of the practical field in relation to aims discovered and posited in the course of praxis itself".103 A unification of the working class has already taken place as Sartre points out later in the text. This occurred against all odds. But, to realize this, one would first have to define the social structures necessary for its concretion. This is outside the scope of our exercise and shall be left for later work. We have defined man as praxis who is mediated by the matter of the world to the extent that he mediates that world. This mediation is driven by need and becomes intensified in the presence of scarcity. With this definition we have gone on to set the foundation for the demonic human intersubjectivity and the History of those mediations. That is all that we may say at this point. CONCLUSION Both the early Marx and the early Sartre are faithfully included in the synthesis of the Critique. The reconciliation occurs on the basis of fundamental alienation, about which we may make three comments: (a) man is a consciousness which is dependent upon the (b) world for its existence in a reciprocal fashion. Without the world, consciousness would be consciousness of nothing and man would have no activity to reflect upon; and, without consciousness, man would have no knowledge of the world or of himself, as he is an integral part of that world. MARX AND SARTRE 143 Again, the end would be nothingness. Finally these two concepts are defining man as, (c) fundamental alienation by which man enacts the univocal relation of his Being to the place where his Being "exists". In a word, you cannot separate the da from Dasein. This becomes immediately apparent to us when we examine the terrifying nature of human relations. These three assumptions allow Marx to write Capital and Sartre to write Being and Nothingness. The marriage of the two is compatible as shown by our examination of each family tree. Their compatibility is represented by their consistent functioning in the Critique. It is important to remember that Sartre has already declared his subordination to Marx (in The Search for a Method, where he states that existentialism is merely an enclave, a means to the larger workings of Marxism). Taken synthetically, rather than hierarchically however, these two theories could hasten the revolution. In any case, what has been said is an answer to certain writers ol tlae "radical left" (as they define themselves), who claim that Sartre is violating Marx. This, we have shown, is not the case. One problem remains: alienation still prevails. From our analysis we would think that it would at least have been made pleasant by the radical revolution Marx describes. Sartre, too, speaks of a dialectical future which we cannot yet imagine. In fact, Sartre's ontology is a product of the capitalist situation, the viewpoint from which he wrote it. His Flaubert analysis proves that it is directly a result of the 20th century capitalistic milieu. Still, he claims that we cannot yet know of any other. Perhaps the insertion of existentialism into Marxism might encourage the self-consciousness which would stimulate the dialectic in a more rapid manner, yet we still have the problem of an alienation which cannot be transcended positively. To this problem only Historical-Dialectical Reason can give an answer. Fletcher School, Tufts University NOTES 1 See particularly the work of G. Novak, A. Schaft, Garaudy, R. Aronson, and the later Lukfics. 144 ROBERT E. KIERNAN 2 I refer the reader to Fromm, Marx's Concept o f Man and M6sz~os, The Concept o f Alienation in Marx for further discussion of the point. a This term is used here only for convenience and understanding, it is interchangeable with the idea of interiorization of the objectified or exteriorized self. 4 The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts o f 1844, Marx; the original pagination as found in the Milllgan and Struik translation shall be used here; refer to Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 3, 3rd Manuscript, p. XI. 5 3rd Manuscript p. XVII. 6 See reference to Feuerbach in letter to him or in 'Theses', Marx-Engels Reader, Tucker (ed.), p. 107. 7 3rd Manuscript p. XXIII. 8 Ibid., p. XXVI. 9 Ibid.,p. XXX. 1o 1st Manuscript p. XXIV. 11 Loc. cir. 12 Loc. cir. la Loc. cir. 14 3rd Manuscript p. XXVI. is In this sense Marx's epistemological and ontological development seems inadequate, ff not reductionist. 16 Loc. cit. 17 Loc. cit. is 1st Manuscript p. XXII. 19 Ibid., p. XXIII. 20 Loc. cir. 21 Ibid., p. XXII. 22 Loc. cit. 23 Ibid., p. XXIV. 24 Ibid., pp. XXIII, XXIV, XXV, respectively. 23 Ibid., p. XXV. 26 2nd Manuscript p. X. 27 Ibid., p. XX. 28 3rd Manuscript p. XXVIII. 29 Again i refer the reader to Barnes, Sartre; Champingy, Stages on Sartre's Way, Hartmann, Sartre's Ontology, all for further discussion of the point. ao Transcendence of the Ego (New York, 1957), p. 36. 31 Ibid., p. 41. 32 Ibid., pp. 46, 53. 33 Ibid., pp. 5 2 - 5 4 . 34 Ibid., p. 75. 33 See Being and 77me (New York, 1962), Section 69, part c. 36 Op. cit., p. 75. 37 Ibid., pp. 8 4 - 8 5 . 38 Ibid., pp. 94, 97,104. 39 Ibid., pp. 9 8 - 9 9 . 40 Ibid., p. 106. 41 Being and Nothingness (New York, 1956), p. 401. 42 Ibid., p. 403. MARX AND SARTRE 4a Ibid., p. 408. For full description see Part Two, pp. 172 ft. 44 Ibid., pp. 408-409. 45 Ibid., pp. 414-415. 46 Ibid., p. 418. For further examples see p. 428. 47 Ibid., p. 420. 48 Loc. cir. 49 Ibid., p. 427. so Ibid., p. 432. s 1 Ibid., p. 434. s2 Ibid., pp. 443,439. sa Ibid., p. 445. s4 Ibid., pp. 471-558, esp. pp. 471-533. ss Ibid., p. 379. s6 Ibid., pp. 785-786. s7 The Critique o f Dialectical Reason (London, 1976), p. 79. s8 Ibid., p. 80. s9 Ibid., p. 81. 60 Ibid., pp. 8 9 - 9 0 . 61 Ibid., p. 98. See Being and Nothingness p. 339 or 415. 62 Loc. cit. 6a Ibid., pp. 120, 121. 64 Loe. cit. 6s Ibid., pp. 124-125. 66 Ibid., p. 127. 67 Ibid., pp. 128-129. 68 Ibid., pp. 131-132. 69 Ibid., p. 133. 7o Ibid., pp. 781-786 and 735-754 respectively. 71 Ibid., p. 134. 72 Ibid., p. 139. 7a Ibid., p. 141. 74 Ibid., p. 143, or Engels,AntiDfihring (Moscow, 1947), p. 194. 7s Ibid., pp. 148-149. 76 Loc. cit. 77 See L 'Idiot de la Famille, 1970, 1972. 78 Op. cit., p. 152. 79 Ibid., p. 152 fn. ao Ibid., p. 157. al Ibid., p. 159. 82 Ibid., p. 164. as Ibid., p. 165. a4 Ibid., p. 167-168. as Ibid., pp. 171-173. 86 Ibid., p. 178. a7 Ibid., p. 181. 88 Ibid., pp. 183-184. 89 Ibid., p. 193, p. 197. 90 Loc. cir. 145 146 ROBERT E. KIERNAN 91 Ibid., p. 204. 92 Ibid., p. 206. 9a Ibid., p. 208. 9,* Ibid., p. 219. 9s fbid., p. 225. 96 Ibid., p. 226. 97 Ibid., p. 227. 98 Loc. cit. 09 Ibid., p. 277 fn. loo Being and Nothingness p. 171 and Critique p. 235. lol Op. cit., p. 242. 1o2 Ibid., p. 245. loa Ibid., p. 247.